Sigma UK launches Olympics-themed photo competition

Sigma UK has launched a 'Spirit of the Games' photographic competition, with the chance to win an SD1 Merrill SLR with 17-50mm F2.8 lens, or a DP2 Merrill large-sensor compact. Running from the start of the Olympic Games on the 28th July to the 31st August, photographers are invited to submit up to five of their images capturing the Spirit of the Games. The overall winner will be selected by Sigma's one judges, while 20 runners-up will be entered into a publicly-judged Facebook competition to win the DP2 Merrill.

Shan't enter in case I get arrested for infringing the "rights" of the sponsorship fascists.

Actually, the security guards searching people for non-permitted soft drinks etc might make a good photo, but that would leave you open to being arrested under the prevention of terrorism or harrassment of officals acts. Happy days.

Right ! All that craziness began with Juan Antonio Samaranch, president of the IOC from 1980 to 2001 and it won't ever stop as the system is now in place: the nowadays olympics are not the real one anylonger, it's just a big money machine.

As far as I'm concerned, not doubt I will boycott once again that stupid race to the this two millimeters higher or that 1/1000th second faster. Not only it's boring but it's a meaningless waste of time also. And over all, it doesn't prove anything.Not fruitful + not a good use of my time = not for me.

I'm not interested in taking part in challenges which goal is clearly to get top-of-the-art pictures of world-famous event for peanuts. But that's my point of view and I'm sure there will be hundreds among us to make their upmost to produce some very nice shots. That's what I'm interested in.

You're right, but as this challenge is about the Olympic thing, it's clearly related to what will happen in and around the stadiums. Moreover nobody's naive, it's obvious someone secretly hope some challengers won't read all the articles of rules and will post anyway some photos of the events. If nobody complains, it's all good.

Gee, it's kind of hard to compete if only credentialled photographers are allowed to take system cameras into the venues. Perhaps one can concoct an "Olympic-Themed" photo with a montage of some stock shots of sports events, crowds, and exuberant athletes. Or maybe one can stage a neighborhood olympic event and let everyone steeple-chase over the flower beds. Time to get creative!

I wonder if Sigma have done a deal with the Olympic Organisers to allow this.

The Olympics committee has special legal 'powers' to insist that any photographic or video content of anything that involves the games is removed from public view. This definately includes imagery taken at the games, but the 'grey' area is how far beyond that it goes.For example the two words 'London' and '2012' whilst OK individually, cannot be used together as 'London 2012' in anything that can be deemed 'commecially beneficial'. This competiton is 'commercially beneficial to Sigma.

Private individuals have been warned that to put images of the games on social networking sites is prohibited - so how are Sigma going to publish the results??

Unless of course they have paid vast licensing fees to the Organisers.

"Olympics-themed" and the general idea of Spirit of the Games can mean anything sporty relevant to the games played, or even something to do with crowds/fans during the Olympics.

And besides, the website has a wimpy little disclaimer:

"Despite wanting to feature images taken of the Games themselves, LOCOG have placed restrictions on amateur and professional photographers alike. Therefore, we are inviting you to submit pictures showing the people, the build-up and the atmosphere from outside the arenas together with local sporting events inspired by the Games. Please ensure your submitted images do not contravene the terms and conditions of your ticket."

"But the real gains for the rich can be witnessed in the long-term implications, once the crowds have gone home. Contrary to popular belief, the devastation inflicted on the poorest and historically marginalised communities is not simply an adverse side-effect, but goes to the very essence of why cities battle to host the Games.

...

The Olympics have always been utilised as a means to pursue what David Harvey calls ‘accumulation by dispossession,’ from visible policies of forced evictions to veiled ones such as gentrification. This violent process is intimately connected to reconfiguring the landscape for capital accumulation and, indeed, is a prime motivation for the very purpose of the Olympics itself.

The Games are not simply hosted to ‘clean up’ the city, but to fundamentally reconfigure it, to ‘cleanse’ it of its poor and undesirable; to not only make way for a city by and for the rich, but to expand the terrain of profitable activity.

...

In 2007, the UN-funded Centre for Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) released a report detailing the effects of the Olympics between 1988 and 2008. It concluded that the Olympic games, having evicted more then two million people in the past twenty years, are one of the top causes of displacement and real-estate inflation in the world.

As with previous host cities, the displacement of residents is not limited to direct government policy. In some East London boroughs landlords have begun evicting tenants in places where rents are fetching fifteen times their standard rates, flats are now being advertised as “Olympic lets” and imposing hefty “penalty” clauses for tenants who refuse to leave.

...

The story in each city remains almost identical. Once selected, a city expends vast amounts of public resource to begin a program of forced displacement, rental speculation, urban renewal projects, demolition of public housing and gentrification. In fact, if there is one thread that runs through almost every Olympic event it is that the poor of each Games subsidise their own violent dispossession.

Any reading of Olympic history reveals the true motives of each host city. It is the necessity to shock, to fast track the dispossession of the poor and marginalised as part of the larger machinations of capital accumulation. The architects of this plan need a spectacular show; a hegemonic device to reconfigure the rights, spatial relations and self-determination of the city’s working class, to reconstitute for whom and for what purpose the city exists. Unlike any other event, the Olympics provide just that kind of opportunity."

A great video skit might be based on the driver who lost his way from Heathrow to London and wandered for hours, at the mercy of a faulty GPS, as a busload of Olympic athletes lost control of their bladders. Title: "The Bussed Day of My Life." Too bad Peter Sellers is no longer around to play the role.

The big problem for this competition is not what camera you're allowed to use, but that any photos taken in Olympic venues ‘cannot be used for any purpose other than for private and domestic purposes'. A competition probably doesn't fall under 'private and domestic'.

So, according to a Sigma spokesman talking to Amateur Photgrapher magazine when quizzed on the matter:

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